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Board adopts revised Affordable Housing Fund rules prioritizing deeper affordability and administrative review
Summary
Prince William County supervisors unanimously approved revisions to the Affordable Housing Fund policies that prioritize deeper affordability (targeting households at 30–50% AMI), add a standardized application worksheet (Appendix A), and give staff administrative authority to score and recommend loan awards to streamline the program.
The Prince William County Board of Supervisors on Feb. 3 unanimously adopted revised policies and guidelines for the county's Affordable Housing Fund, following a directive to align the program with best practices.
Joanie Duckett, director of housing, said staff consulted Loudoun County, refined scoring criteria to emphasize deep, long-term affordability (targeting households with 30–50% of area median income), and created a project development description worksheet (Appendix A) to standardize submissions and enable objective scoring. The revisions also clarified that recommended awards would be administratively evaluated by staff and presented to the housing board for informational purposes rather than requiring the board to endorse awards.
Duckett said the changes were intended to keep the fund defensible, protect the revolving loan pool by requiring repayment rather than grants in most situations, and to emphasize projects that provide livable communities and reduce residents's transportation costs by locating near services and jobs.
Supervisors praised the rapid response to the directive, the focus on affordability and the worksheet's role in creating consistent data for scoring. Several supervisors asked the office to consider weighting homeownership opportunities higher in future iterations because ownership supports wealth-building. The board's vote to adopt the revised policies was unanimous.
Next steps: staff will implement the revised timeline for Notice of Funding Availability, application review, scoring and awards; loan approvals will be processed administratively and returned to the board as informational items when appropriate.
